Pilgrims

The Pilgrims were a group of English Puritans who fled religious persecution in England for the Netherlands before establishing a colony, the Plymouth Colony, in North America in 1620. The Pilgrims were led by separatists who sought to establish churches independent from the Church of England, and this separatism was illegal under the 1559 Act of Uniformity, which forced all churches to sign allegiance to the Church of England. In 1607, the Pilgrims moved to the Netherlands to escape from persecution, settling in Leiden in the Netherlands. Fearing that their children were being assimilated into the libertine Dutch culture, the Pilgrims decided to arrange with English investors to establish a new colony in the Americas. In 1620, they established a colony in what is now eastern Massachusetts, arriving in the Americas aboard the Mayflower (some of them, aboard the Speedwell, chose to join the Mayflower after Speedwell was deemed unseaworthy). 131 Pilgrims arrived in America, and they established a treaty with Chief Massasoit with help from Patuxet tribesman Squanto. The Pilgrims' settlement of Plymouth would lead to further English immigration, and the ultimate creation of the colony of Massachusetts.